


Stand

by sammiewilson



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, I just wrote this to help process my feelings about endgame, Iron Dad, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), and it's taken me a month to be okay enough to post it, but in a good way?, canon major character death mentioned, endgame spoilers, idk man, so here we are ig, this is just a horribly depressing fic to be honest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 19:58:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18977344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammiewilson/pseuds/sammiewilson
Summary: She sucks in a deep breath, bracing her hand against her armor-covered thigh, and wonders if it will be her last as he hefts the blade higher.Is this what it feels like to die?she wonders, half-delirious from blood loss and fear....Her father’s legacy is a tough one to carry, but Morgan does her best to make her father proud.





	Stand

When Morgan Stark thinks of her father, she thinks of juice pops and laughter. Warmth and summers spent learning to swim in their lake. Smiles given freely, arms holding her tightly, _I love you’s_ whispered with meaning.

 

She makes it a point to remember Tony Stark, the man behind the suit. She remembers her father as the marvelous, selfless, genius, loving man that he was, not the hero that the rest of the world remembers him as.

 

He gave his life to save the universe, because he was a hero and that’s what heroes do. But he was more than that to Morgan, and that’s something she will never forget.

 

But, in times like these, when she’s on her knees, blood flowing freely down her face, suit half-destroyed, the enemy staring down at her in triumph, that she can’t help but remember her father as Iron Man.

 

She hears the scrape of a blade on cement and thinks of her father, chest torn open, metal shoved inside. Thinks of him rising out of that desert and becoming a legend.

 

She feels the heat of fire on the side of her face, glances out of the corner of her eye to see another decimated building, and thinks of her father flying a bomb through a wormhole with no promise of return. Thinks of him returning anyway, having saved the city and himself.

 

She places a palm on the ground, feels the gravel press into her hand and realizes she only has one active gauntlet left. She thinks of a man facing a brainwashed assassin in an Armani suit and a watch-turned-weapon. Thinks of him losing, but living.

 

Her arm buckles under the weight of her numb body and what little of her suit she had left, and she falls back to the ground.  Her body aches and blood pours from countless cuts, scrapes, and wounds. She feels tired. She feels angry. She feels defeated. And then she thinks of her father, exhausted and half-broken, still willing to face a mad titan that wanted to destroy the world.

 

She thinks of him standing up and beating the unbeatable. She thinks of him willingly exchanging his life for billions. She thinks of him fondly, heartbreakingly, desperately, and wishes for the millionth time that she could speak to him.  That she could ask him the same questions that always come to mind when her back is to the wall and death is staring her in the face.

 

_Is this what it feels like Dad?_

_Is this what it is to lose? To know that this breath is your last? To know that the end is near and you can do nothing to stop it?_

_  
Were you afraid, when you faced death? Or did you greet it with open arms and relief, knowing that it was enough?_

_Is this enough, Daddy?_

 

_Am_ I _enough?_

 

This all lasts barely a moment, but to Morgan it feels like a lifetime. She still thinks it isn’t enough when the scrape of metal stops, and she looks up to see the enemy smiling down at her with all the care of a man who knows he’s won. 

 

She hears a warning shout—Nate, she thinks, though it could very well be Harley flying overhead. It doesn’t much matter though, because she knows she’s alone. Cassie is dealing with her own monsters three blocks away, and Lila is with her brother, too far away to lend her any of the strength she carries in spades.

 

No, it’s just her and this man who wishes her dead. Just as it was her father and Thanos, though the stakes aren’t nearly as high. She’s just a girl of sixteen in a suit made to live up to her father’s legacy, facing death by a man with no greater ambition than to destroy Manhattan. 

 

She can’t help but think that she’s failed spectacularly, at most things, but living up to the legend that is—was—her father most of all. 

 

She sucks in a deep breath, bracing her hand against her armor-covered thigh, and wonders if it will be her last as he hefts the blade higher. 

 

_Is this what it feels like to die?_ she wonders, half-delirious from blood loss and fear. 

 

And perhaps she really _is_ losing it, because in that moment, she swears it’s her father’s voice that replies:  _No, this is not the end of you, Morgan Stark. Just the beginning. So stand up and prove it._

 

Her breath catches in her throat, and her eyes widen in what must seem like fear to the man swinging an axe at her head in a perfect arch.

 

But it isn’t, not anymore. Not this time.

 

She catches it with her left hand—the one still protected by nanotech—at the last second. She strains against the weight of the axe, but the burn of her muscles and the chill of her blood trickling down her spine fades into the background as she allows the memory of her father’s voice to course through her.

 

She grits her teeth and fights to regain control, to get her feet back under her and _stand_ , even as her muscles and her wounds protest. She doesn’t let it stop her.

 

_I may be bloody and beaten and weak now, but that is not all I am._

 

_Maybe this should be where I end, maybe this is what it feels like to lose. Maybe I’ll never be as strong or as selfless or as suffering as my father. Maybe I’ll never be the hero that he was, and maybe that’s okay._

 

_But I_ am _his daughter, and if there is one thing I know, it is this:_

 

_I_ am  _Iron Man._

 

And so she stands. 

 

She stands and she fights and she _wins_.

 

(and she makes her father proud)


End file.
